Tag Archives: monkey king

It’s the story of that one time Sun Wukong went to Fairyland and busted stuff up. I read it at New Voices at Nine Worlds 2013, and wrote it a couple of years before that, so it’s not really new at all. It took a while to sell, even though it’s one of my favourite of my stories. Here’s how it starts.

Now to be fair, Sun Wukong was already in a bad mood when he arrived at the Faerie Court.

You don’t know who Sun Wukong is? You’re kidding! You haven’t heard of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, the one who is Mindful of Emptiness, the Exquisite and Most Satisfactory Prince of Monkeys, defier of gods and Buddhas alike, scorner of other people’s dignity and personal inspiration to little monkeys everywhere?

One day a stone cracked and he jumped out: that was the miracle that was his birth. His fur is as silken as your favorite shirt and as golden as the midday sun. He has eyes of fire and the biggest ears anyone ever saw on a monkey. And if you want to look up his name in the Book of Life and Death, forget about it, because he went down to Hell and wiped that shit out himself!

You know who he is? Why didn’t you say so? You didn’t know his name? That’s okay. All gods have more than one name, to give the mortals more chances to swear. You can call him the Monkey God or Monkey King or just plain Monkey, whatever you like. It’s the same simian in the end.

This was in the pre-Enlightenment days, you understand, before Sun Wukong mended his ways and became a Buddha. In the days when Sun Wukong was still naughty, and enjoyed the occasional punch-up.

I forgot to mention that Kaleidotrope has said they will take my short story Monkey King, Faerie Queen. Huzzah! Won’t be seeing it till 2015, but I’m very pleased. It’s been hard to sell — I first wrote it in 2010 — but it’s my very favourite of all my short stories. It’s about the time the Monkey King went to the Faerie Court and fucked shit up, because that is how he rolls.

Now to be fair, Sun Wukong was already in a bad mood when he arrived in the Faerie Court.

You don’t know who Sun Wukong is? You’re kidding! You haven’t heard of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, the one who is Mindful of Emptiness, the Exquisite and Most Satisfactory Prince of the Monkeys, defier of gods and Buddhas alike, scorner of other people’s dignity and personal inspiration to little monkeys everywhere?

One day a stone cracked and he jumped out: that was the miracle that was his birth. His fur is as silken as your favourite shirt and as golden as the midday sun. He has eyes of fire and the biggest ears anyone ever saw on a monkey. And if you want to look up his name in the Book of Life and Death, forget about it, because he went down to Hell and wiped that shit out himself!

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